/ Francis Fukuyama

Capitalism is not just a historical epoch among others. In a way, the once fashionable and now half-forgotten Francis Fukuyama was right: global capital is “the end of history.” A certain excess which was, as it were, kept under check in previous history, perceived as a localizable perversion, as an excess, a deviation, is in capitalism elevated into the very principle of social life, in the speculative movement of money begetting more money, of a system which can survive only by constantly revolutionizing its own conditions-that is to say, in which the thing can survive only as its own excess, constantly exceeding its own “normal” constraints. And, perhaps it is only today, in global capitalism in its “postindustrial”, digitalized form, that, to put it in Hegelian terms, really existing capitalism is reaching the level of its notion: perhaps, one should follow again Marx’s old, antievolutionist motto (incidentally taken verbatim from Hegel) that the anatomy of man provides the key for the anatomy of the monkey-that is, in order to deploy the inherent, notional structure of a social formation, one must start with its most developed form. +

Seymour Martin Lipset was a colleague of mine at George Mason University, and for the years I was there we taught a course together oncomparative politics that was originally based on his book American Exceptionalism. I learned an extraordinary amount from talking to Lipset, reading his books, and listening to his lectures, and I appreciatethe opportunity to apply some of his thinking to our current situation. +